


Apple Cider

by Acai



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Slice of Life, but in the past, except it's october i'm sorry, implied/referanced suicide attempt, lots of fluff, photo albums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:44:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8278172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai/pseuds/Acai
Summary: Kuroo was sick that Christmas, but he's just fine this time around.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Alternatively titled "hohohoes".

> **_Apple Cider_ **
> 
> _Requested by Paxifrisk on Tumblr._
> 
> Send further requests and prompts to Aobajosighs.
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

_‘It’s not like Christmas’_ is an extraordinary thought to have, and reassuring words to say. That wasn’t to say that Kuroo didn’t like Christmas, because it had always been one of the best times of the year, but the events circulating _around_ Christmastime were events that probably nobody wanted to see again. There’s a dusty old Christmas album in the living room at his mom’s house that only ever got touched once a year when they looked through it and then updated it with the new photos, and Kuroo’s in every single family photo except for one.

And to say _it’s not like Christmas_ was to say that he was doing alright. It was to say that he wasn’t about to break down alone in his room watching the snow fall onto the ground, breaking down harder than ever before, and it meant that he wasn’t about to become so tired that he was going to decide that he didn’t want to be awake ever again. To say that _it’s not like Christmas_ was to say that it wasn’t like the year when, two days before Christmas, he ended up in a mess that left his carpet stained and meant that there was now a conveniently placed rug that nobody ever, ever moved for any reason.

_“Kuroo was sick that Christmas,”_ his mother said whenever anyone asked. He was, he supposed. His body was fine, anyway. It wasn’t flu, but the kind of sickness that made you tired and sad and hopeless. It dragged him down like a sickness, making him weaker and weaker until he gave up, and he guesses now he’s kind of glad that he didn’t manage to end himself like he was trying to do. At the time it had been kind of terrible, because he didn’t try and bleed himself to death wanting to stay alive, and yet there he was in front of his crying mother, still breathing. And it had been equally terrible having to talk to a stuffy lady in white and having to take medication that made him so tired he felt like he was drowning. It was always like drowning. Sadness so heavy he couldn’t breathe, tiredness so deep he could fall asleep and never wake up. But he was glad in the present, at the very least, because he would have hated to miss everything that the future ended up bringing.

Kuroo would have hated to miss the cat shoving over the tree, would have hated to miss Bokuto trying to put it back up, would have hated to miss the way that Akaashi and Kenma didn’t care enough about the tree to try and put it back up, going instead to the kitchen to made apple cider, would have hated to miss the way that it felt to laugh and try and help put the tree back up. The entire apartment smelled like cider, Kenma had made away with one or two of the apples, Akaashi was glaring at the cat for causing a ruckus and Bokuto was assuring the cat that it wasn’t her fault. He would have hated to miss _them._ The tangle of their feet while they tried to sleep and coming home to them after classes every day. The way they kissed, the way they spoke, the way they breathed.

The cat made a second attempt up the tree and Akaashi glared daggers into her pelt, plucking her off before she could cause another mess. Kenma bit into an apple that was meant for the cider, leaning over the edge of the couch to watch Bokuto put a fallen ornament back onto the tree. Bokuto was talking, about everything and nothing, and they’d turned the light off to sit in the glow of the Christmas lights and the candles that Bokuto had obsessively placed about the living room. The radio played old seasonal tunes that they all knew but didn’t sing along to, leaving it to be a warm familiarity in the background.

_Kuroo was sick that Christmas,_ but Kuroo felt fine this Christmas. They were going to wake up the next morning on Christmas Eve, and he was going to have made it another year. December 23rd was the day that he failed, but Kuroo was glad, because if he’d dug deep enough into his skin then he never would have known what it felt like to love the three of them.

The smell of apple cider and the winterberry candle that Bokuto had put on the table to burn was different than the smell of a sterile hospital. The sound of the music in the background and Bokuto and Akaashi’s unheated argument was better than the sound of his mother crying and the incessant beeping.  Watching Kenma gather the cat up and drop her on the couch next to Kuroo so that she could sit in his lap while he gamed was so much better than watching the white snow outside fall and made the already-too-white hospital room even more piercing to see.

_Kuroo was sick that Christmas,_ missing from the photos where they were all smiling and he was at the hospital tired and hating the world because he felt weak. But this Christmas— _this_ year on December 23rd—he was on the couch and Kenma’s feet were tucked under Kuroo’s legs to keep them warm and Akaashi and Bokuto had made up and were settling down on the ground next to them. Nobody said it, but Kuroo was pretty sure that they’d each thought of it at least once. He could tell in the way that they’d brush their hands over his arm when they walked by like they were checking to make sure that he was, in fact, there.

(He was. He was there and he was real and he was glad.)

He’d thought about it plenty. Wondering and thinking and dwelling on what-ifs.

(What if he’d dug deeper? What if he’d hit that artery? Would they all be together and spending this moment together still? Would the apartment still smell like apple cider? Would they have chosen to move into the apartment together, without Kuroo there point out the balcony that they’d all liked? Would they have gone and bought the pesky cat from the shelter three years back without Kuroo there to bring up the fact that none of them had ever had a single pet? Would it really have been a terrible big deal, had he gone? The world would have kept turning, of course.)

(Ah, but the what-ifs didn’t matter, because he was there and the apartment that they’d bought for the balcony smelled like apple cider and the pesky cat from the shelter was trying to drink the eggnog.)

There was a reminder of that year in the form of faded white scar lines in the crook of his arm and above his artery, but other than that, the Christmas from before is a memory that they can shove out of their minds. It’s not a completely terrible memory.

_The door opened loudly, dragging across the floor and making a godawful sound like it needed to be oiled. It wasn’t his mom, and Kuroo knew that because he would have heard her tearful sobbing already. She was probably in the hallway, though. It’s Kenma, then, because the footsteps are soft. All that Kenma says is, “the reruns are on channel forty-three.”_

_Kuroo would have liked to think that was the only reason that Kenma was there. To watch the reruns like they did every year. They weren’t very good reruns, but it had become tradition. They generally watched them clad in pajamas and huddled on the floor of the living room, drinking cider or hot chocolate and shushing their parents when their chatter got too loud from the kitchen. This year, it seemed, they would spend it sitting on a hospital bed while Kuroo’s arm bled through his bandages and fluid got pumped into his system. They watch anyway._

_“You can talk about it.” Kuroo said, because it was pointless to dance around it._

_“I didn’t come to talk about it,” Kenma said, like it was simple. “You’ve probably had enough talking about it.”_

_“I haven’t said anything about it. Everyone’s skirting around it, and I’m counting on you to break that pattern,” Kuroo insisted, because Kenma was supposed to be blunt and to the point._

_Kenma waited until the commercials interrupted the reruns to shift so that he was facing Kuroo, face still unhelpfully blank. “That was the dumbest thing you could have ever done,” he began, glaring halfheartedly and letting the fire seep into his words rather than his face. “And I can’t begin to say how stupid you are for pulling that. Your mom’s been crying for hours, your sister’s been crying with her, and they’re not the only ones. Did you think, even once, to talk to them? To the people who would have missed you?”_

_Kuroo thought that Kenma was done, because he’d turned back around and the reruns were playing once more. But he kept going. “We’ve never missed this. I won’t miss it this year because you were dumb enough to think nobody would miss you. You’d have missed this. You’d have missed this and everything else. Never would have graduated, never would have gone to college or loved someone. But don’t--,” Kenma paused, sucking in a long breath. “They do care. And they’re out there missing you like you’re gone. But you’re right here—keep it that way.”_

_And Kuroo had thought, then, that it was all dumb words with no meaning, because there was nothing in the future for him and there was nobody who’d love him._

And Kuroo thought now that they were brutally honest words, because there was everything right here and right now and he loved every breath that the people in front of him took.

Kenma snapped his game shut, dropping it onto the couch and picking up the remote instead. The TV lights up and an infomercial blares for a second before the channel changes to, as it always does, channel forty-three. They’re the same dumb reruns with some remakes thrown in here and there, and Kenma’s always just as adamant that they watch. A creature of habit, but Kuroo thinks that this tradition is a little bit more than that. Kenma goes so far as to dump the cat on Akaashi so that he can worm his way over to Kuroo to watch, making himself comfortable with his hand placed in Kuroo’s lap so that Kuroo’s fingers will tangle into it and play with it absentmindedly. Akaashi places the cat in Bokuto’s lap and goes to pour the cider. They’ll probably go to bed after the reruns—or during—, and when they wake up in the morning they’ll hold their own Christmas. Then they’ll go to Kuroo’s mother’s, where they’ll all spend the day flipping through the albums just to tease Kuroo (and because he was a cute kid). Then they’ll fall asleep somehow in Kuroo’s decently-sized bed, all crammed together because Kuroo’s mother doesn’t believe in keeping the heater on while they sleep.

And, Kuroo thinks, maybe they’ll flip past the photo where everyone’s smiles are taunt and Kuroo’s mother looks tired and sad even through the smile, and where Kuroo’s not there. But they’ll flip past it to the next year, when Kuroo’s back and his family is wearing awful, awful matching sweaters, and Kenma’s grouped in there somewhere looking stone-faced while Kuroo grins cheekily next to him.

And they’ll all be there that year for the photo. They’ll all be there (even the cat, because Kuroo’s mom loves the cat and Kenma’s too doting to leave her alone on Christmas), and Kuroo’s going to be there with them.

They would spend Christmas there, together, and they’d probably spend most of their time the way that they normally did on Christmases there, sneaking away from his relatives to go outside and mess around in the snow that was always untouched. It would be warm, and they’d all be there, and Kuroo’s mom wouldn’t be crying.

_Kuroo was sick that Christmas,_ but he’s just fine this time around.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: Aobajosighs  
> [Ask box open for prompts and requests.]


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